Master of Death
by rainbowrites
Summary: The first time Kurt met Death was on the playground. Death was there for the flowers Kurt was picking.
1. Chapter 1

The first time Kurt met Death was on the playground. Death was there for the flowers Kurt was picking, he explained.

Kurt had offered to put the flowers back in the ground (Death had assured him that while it wouldn't help it _was _a very nice thought) and then told him that he should probably add some sparkly glitter to his cape.

IT'S NOT A CAPE. Death said. IT'S A CLOAK.

"What's the difference?" Kurt asked.

A CAPE IS SHORTER, AND DOESN'T COVER THE ENTIRE BODY.

"Oh." Kurt considered that. "So your knees would be showing."

AND CONSIDERABLE MORE THAN THAT.

Kurt nodded, contemplating the horizon as he mulled over this new information. "That makes sense then, that you wear a cape. I think most people don't want to look at skellingtons unless they're the ones in the doctor's office or in the haunted houses. But only on Halloween." He added quickly. "Otherwise only in doctor's offices." He looked up and down at Death. "Are you from a doctor's office?"

I AM NOT.

"Oh." Kurt looked crushed at his script being so utterly denied. But, as small children do, he rallied quickly. "You probably just don't remember." He said patronizingly. "I don't remember being born either, it's okay."

I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. ESPECIALLY THOSE THINGS WHICH HAVE NOT YET HAPPENED.

Kurt cocked his head to the side. "But if you 'specially remember stuff that hasn't happened, then doesn't that mean you don't really remember the stuff that has? People only have so much room in their brains. Daddy says that memories are like closets, and can only store so much stuff. He says that whenever he forgets to bring home the milk."

Death nodded. BUT I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO A DOCTOR'S OFFICE.

Kurt looked aghast. "But what if you get sick?"

I NEVER HAVE. PERHAPS I CANNOT GET SICK. Death bowed his head, and Kurt felt very sorry for him. Being sick was awful, but it also meant ice cream, and having your mommy sing to you and pet your hair. Maybe Death didn't have a mommy to pet his hair.

"I can pet your hair." Kurt offered.

Death cocked his head to one side consideringly. BUT I HAVE NO HAIR TO PET.

"I can rub your head if you're bald, that's what Mommy does to Daddy."

I HAVE NO HEAD.

"Did you lose it? Mommy says that she'd lose her head if it wasn't attached to her shoulders." Kurt glanced around him, as if hoping to have somehow missed a disembodied head during their talk.

I HAVE A SKULL INSTEAD. Death offered, after a moment of watching Kurt scrutinizing the grass.

"Oh, okay then. I can rub that." Now that the idea was in Kurt's head, there was no way he was leaving without rubbing Death's skull. Death didn't quite know what to do with this sudden course of action. Death didn't often come face to face with determined 5-year-olds and their skull-rubbing tendencies. Humans were so very confusing.

Death sighed, and it was a gust of music and dying men's rattles and the echoes of screams into the night.

"You should brush your teeth." Kurt said.

Death gave up, and bent so that Kurt could remove his hood and rub soothing circles onto the skull there.


	2. Chapter 2

The second time Kurt met Death was in the hospital.

"Are you here for my mommy?" Kurt sounded almost as old as Death, and if Death had a heart it would be breaking.

I AM.

"Will she be okay now?" Kurt hesitated, looking at the scythe in Death's hand. "Will she be okay now that she's with you? She won't- she won't hurt anymore?"

NOTHING WILL EVER HURT HER AGAIN. Death promised.

Kurt lower lip wobbled alarmingly. Death carefully unfolded a white pinky bone from the blackness of his cloak. It glittered under the harsh lights of the hospital. PINKY SWEAR.

Kurt silently accepted Death's pinky swear, the childish action made ceremonial by his solemness. Men had been buried with more pomp before, but Death had been to very few that made even him feel the weight of power and enchantment pressing against his bones.

YOU HAVE MAGIC IN YOU. Death observed.

"Of course I do." Kurt said. "Mommy always told me my voice was magic." Kurt's voice didn't waver, and Death felt unaccountably fond of this tiny boy's strength. Humans could be so resilient. Well, metaphorically. They tended to be unable to bounce back from things like getting crushed under pianos or falling off cliffs. He would know.

SHE WAS PROBABLY RIGHT.

"Mommies are always right." Kurt side-eyed him. "Didn't your mommy ever teach you that?"

I HAVE NO MOTHER.

Kurt clasped Death's finger bones, staring up at the eternally grinning skull. "I'm sorry." He lifted up his arms, and Death picked him up obediently. "Me neither, now." He kissed Death's cheekbone.

MOST PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF ME YOU KNOW. Death remarked after he set Kurt back down. He was definitely not choked up. He was a skeleton; it was physically impossible. Death ignored the fact that technically, most of what he did (if not everything) was physically impossible. He and Physics had had rather a bad falling out long ago. Physics cheated at gin rummy.

"Why?"

BECAUSE I AM DEATH.

"Oh." Kurt turned this over in his head. "I thought it was 'cause you were a skellington."

THAT PROBABLY DOESN'T HELP. Death admitted.

"Do you have _any _family?" Kurt tried to imagine life without his Daddy. He hugged himself and stopped thinking about it.

I HAD A DAUGHTER ONCE, LONG AGO. SHE MARRIED MY APPRENTICE. THEY ARE BOTH DEAD NOW.

Kurt patted Death's knee consolingly. "I'm sorry." He wrinkled his nose. "Uhm, what's an uh-pren-tice." He sounded the word out carefully.

HE WOULD HAVE TAKEN UP MY MANTLE.

"He was going to steal your fireplace? Where would you put your picture frames?" Kurt looked extremely affronted on Death's behalf. Stealing was wrong, his mommy and daddy had taught him that after he tried to take the horrible tacky garden gnomes from Ms. Doozenblatt's lawn next door. Even if he was saving her from herself, they'd explained, it wasn't okay to steal.

ER, NO. I MEANT THAT HE WOULD BECOME DEATH AFTER ME.

"Would he have turned into a skellington too?" A thought occurred to Kurt. "Was your daughter a skellington? Is your wife a skellington?"

NO. AND I HAVE NO WIFE.

"Oh." Kurt looked at him sadly. He'd obviously decided that Death's wife must have died. Death decided not to correct him. Humans and their assumptions. It was really quite interesting. There was nothing Death did not know, and thus there was nothing for him to make assumptions about. "Do you miss them?"

Death considered it. I DON'T KNOW.

"How do you not know?"

IT IS A HUMAN THING, TO MISS. TO DESIRE WHAT YOU CANNOT HAVE.

"Are you not human?"

I AM DEATH.

"But you've got a human skellington." Kurt poked a protruding wrist bone suspiciously, like it might turn out to be made of marshmallows instead of bone. "Doesn't that mean you used to be human?"

MOST SKELETONS ARE SOMETHING THAT WAS, WHEREAS THIS IS WHAT I AM.

"Oh." Kurt considered this, and nodded decisively when it decided it seemed to make sense. Once again, Death marveled at this boy's magic. Most people tended to go through rather messier attempts at understanding Death. Usually there was more screaming. Which, really, Death found quite rude. It wasn't like he _killed_ people.

Kurt pointed at the scythe. "Is that for me?"

EH? Death clutched the scythe protectively.

Kurt shrugged. "People keep giving me presents. They think if they give me enough stuff it'll help fill the hole in my life, that's what Aunty Anna said. I wasn't supposed to hear her, she thought I was sleeping." He looked down and carefully examined his socks. Death looked too. They were very nice socks. Lacy.

I SEE. Death tried to hide his scythe behind him. It didn't quite work. The scythe was very big, and Death didn't have a lot of body for it to hide behind. Kurt started to reach for it again.

ER, WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE BINKY INSTEAD?

"Binkies are for babies." Kurt said imperiously. "I'm _eight_, I'm not a baby."

BINKY IS MY HORSE. HE IS VERY GOOD WITH BABIES THOUGH.

"Oh. I didn't know babies could ride horses. Do you ride with many babies?"

VERY OFTEN.

Kurt pursed his lips as he thought. "Is that sad?" He asked. "My mommy said that it was especially sad when Mrs. Newberry's baby died 'cause babies had so much potato-shell."

POTENTIAL? Death hazarded a guess.

"That." Kurt nodded.

ALL HUMANS DIE WITHOUT FULFILLING THEIR POTENTIAL. Death said. POTENTIAL IS A VERY HUMAN THING. RATS DO NOT CURSE THE LOST TOES THEIR BROTHERS NEVER BIT, AND FLOWERS DO NOT MOURN THE SEEDS THEIR SISTERS WILL NEVER SOW. THE GREATEST MAN WILL BE EXPECTED TO HAVE BEEN BETTER, AND THUS HUMANS TURN THEIR KIN TO SAINTS FOR THE MIRACLE OF DYING.

Kurt turned that over in his mind. There was a lot there. Finally, he decided to address the most important aspect.

"So it's okay to pick flowers then, since their families don't mind?" He asked. Kurt had wondered about that since he first met Death. He knew he would have to leave flowers for his mother. It was what one did. He didn't want to have to feel guilty for it.

THEY CANNOT MIND, FOR THEY DO NOT HAVE ONE.

Kurt nodded. It made sense. Flowers didn't have any skulls.

Kurt considered the offer once more. But after a moment he shook his head. "My daddy needs me." He said solemnly. "I can't leave. I don't have time for binkies and kids stuff. I need to be grown up now."

I TAKE A GREAT MANY GROWN UPS ON BINKY.

Kurt looked back down at his socks, then back up at Death's scythe. "You'll be back, won't you?" He didn't look at Death's face, or what passed as it, "You'll come back, and then I'll ride Binky."

I WILL BE BACK. Death promised, for there was no escaping Death. He was always there for you in the end.

Kurt accepted the promise as his due. "I'll see you later," he said, and his words looped chains of magic around Death. Death examined them curiously. He had never been bound thus. Usually it was the other way around.

YOU WILL.

Kurt kissed his gleaming white cheekbone once more to seal their deal, and then went back to his father. Death watched him go. He should go see Susan; he was pretty sure her last Christmas postcard had come from a boarding school. Maybe she could tell him if all children were like this.

He ended up appearing in a crowded classroom during her lecture "The Dark Ages, No They Couldn't Just Turn On The Lights and No The Fuses Were Fine". She ended up using him as an example of the Bubonic Plague and gave an impromptu anatomy class, so Death counted it as excellent family bonding time.


	3. Chapter 3

"Get out"

Death turned slowly.

The boy was older, his baby fat melted away like candle wax. Death recognized the spark that burned there. The boy's eyes were unfamiliar though, pink with crying and hard with fury, and for a moment Death wondered if he'd lost track of time and if this was perhaps the great-great-grandson of the original young boy he'd met picking flowers. It had happened before. Quite embarrassing.

HELLO.

"Don't speak," the boy hissed. "Don't move. Just. Get out."

Death felt the tug of magic on his bones, the feeble words made steel by the boy's will. He looked at the child, and at the man beside him.

HE IS YOUR FATHER. He said, because Death is many things but subtle isn't really one of his strong suits. Not in the human definition of the word anyway. Death is subtle and secret in his own ways, but by human standards he is what Albert not-so-affectionately calls "the bastard love child of Captain Obvious and an enigma wrapped inside a puzzle locked in a labyrinth that's part of a riddle that's actually just part of a mad man's attempt to make conversation with his pet coconut."

"He's not yours," Kurt said. "It's not his time yet."

WOULD YOU BARGAIN FOR HIS LIFE? Death asked. He was curious, and the feeling interested him. Humans did such strange things sometimes; even Death could not always tell their future. It helped that Fate and Destiny often got into cat fights about who truly ruled the Universe. They were like cock fights but with claws rather than spurs and the future of the world hanging in the balance instead of $2000.

Unless they were a part of a soap opera. Then the answer was always "she's pregnant, and you're the father." Even if they were both women. Especially then, actually. Ysabell had been especially fond of Ankh-Morpok's #1 soap "As The Turtle Turns (and Everything Falls Into Space (And By The Way, You're Pregnant))". But then again, Death did not think the people in soaps really counted as human.

He watched Kurt pale, interested in the way the two human's hands both turned white when Kurt pressed them together. The blood pumping beneath the thin veneer of skin was so fragile, so easily affected. It was a wonder humans managed to do as much as they did, considering.

"What do you want from me?" The words fall like stones, and Kurt's tongue darts out to taste them on his lips.

Death had seen men run into fires for their children, had reaped them himself. Men running into fires for their parents however, was far rarer.

ONCE, Death said, THERE WAS A WISE MAN.

Kurt's eye twitched, and his mouth opened to ask _what is the point of this_ but the computer by his father's head beeped loudly, and he fell silent.

THE WISE MAN WAS DYING. Death felt it was important to say this, although he didn't like to draw attention to himself. Death was always there after all. He didn't need people to acknowledge that to make it any less true.

A RABBIT, A FOX, AND A BEAR CAME UPON HIM. THE BEAR FISHED AND BROUGHT HIM THE SALMON TO EAT. THE FOX UNEARTHED ROOTS FOR HIM TO EAT.

"But the rabbit found nothing," Kurt said. His hand spasmed around empty air. "So he had the old man build a fire, and then he threw himself into it so that the man could eat him and thus live on."

YES

"That's a Bhuddist story originally," Kurt squinted at him, "Though the details changed."

Death was not surprised by the fact that Kurt knew this story about death, about rebirth and of sacrifice. Then again, nothing truly surprised him.

Kurt smiled, but it was the grin of dying men, for all that it was not blood stained. "So do I have to jump into the fire?"

If Death had eyelids he would have blinked. EH?

"To save my dad," Kurt's fingers were white and bloodless from the grip he had on the end of the bed, "Do I have to sacrifice myself?"

NO, Death said. I JUST THOUGHT THAT'S WHAT HUMANS DID IN THESE SITUATIONS. He shrugged, the movement awkward and jerky as if someone else moved his bones for him. TELL STORIES TO DISTRACT AND ENTERTAIN

Kurt stared at him. Death stared back. Death had rather a lot of staring contests. He never blinked. Kurt's lip twitched. Death's did not.

Kurt's laugh sounded like it had been punched out of him, a wheeze of surprise and pain. "Wrong script," He muttered, in between gasps of laughter. Or it could have been sobs. They were too similar for Death to be able to tell definitively. Humans kept their joys and their despairs so close in their hearts, entwined together even tighter than the Gordian Knot. Or the Boredian Knot, which the Crown Prince of Gimli had invented during one afternoon when the television broke, which had promptly baffled so many people that Civil War ensued over it. People didn't like being made to feel stupid after all. Especially not by a little boy. Better to just kill him and go back to feeling good about yourself and your own little world, free of complicated tangles and impossible problems with no real solutions.

"So are you going to save him?" Kurt asked. The words trembled in the air, fragile and dying.

I DO NOT SAVE PEOPLE, Death said, for he was Death. PEOPLE WILL NOT DIE AS LONG AS THEY REMAIN IN MY REALM, FOR IT IS A PLACE OF NOTHING AND NOTHING CANNOT DIE.

Kurt would have known that, had he been younger. But he was older now, and the world had caught him a little tighter. "If he doesn't die, then I'll be your apprentice." Kurt had spent the last few years of his life balancing on that razor wire between self-expression and safety, and he knew that everything had a price.

Death cocks his head to the side, for he had seen Mort do that many times when they traveled together, when they came upon someone Mort said was "a weird one." Death strongly suspected Mort would have declared Kurt "a super weird one" and had always wanted to try out the head tilt. YOU WOULD TAKE UP MY MANTLE?

Kurt laughs again, that same punched out sound. "But not your photographs."

I HAVE NO PHOTOGRAPHS. THEY ARE TO HELP PEOPLE REMEMBER, AND I NEVER FORGET.

"Yeah, I should have guessed." Kurt muttered. He rubbed the buttons of his pocket. "Sometimes they're just nice though." He swallowed, and nodded. "I would take up your mantle." He smiled, a broken slash across his mouth that let his teeth gleam under the hospital lights like bones. "Does that mean I'd have to become a skellington?"

Death laughed, and it sounded like someone who has never heard a laugh before, never even read a description in a book. It was too hard and throaty like a scream, falling flat with false promises.

Kurt didn't flinch, just sighed and flicked his hair from his eyes. "You need to laugh from the diaphragm to really make it look like you care."

The next time Death was much better at it. It crept up from his toes bones, reverberating from where Death decided his diaphragm should be, and reverberating around the room like a church bell tolling.

Kurt straightened impossibly taller, so tense he could shatter with a touch. "Do we have a deal?"

Death extended one gleaming hand. He waggled his pinky finger at carefully calculated angles. He remembered of course. Death always remembers. Humans are very strange, but this once stopped tears, and so, Death knew, there was no reason it would not work this time as well. PINKY SWEAR

This time when Kurt laughed the corners of his mouth actually turned up, though only for a moment before he dragged them back down. "Pinky swear." He rocked up on his tiptoes to respect the script they'd set, but not quite as far as he once had. He was older now after all, and taller. "My dad will be okay, and I will be your apprentice." They shook on it, and once more Death could feel the magic of the boy's words tickling at his ankle bones.

HE WILL. Death agreed, for it was not yet Burt Hummel's time. His time would come, and Death would take him, as he would take everyone in time. No deal would save him.

Kurt kissed Death's cheekbone to seal their deal. "He will."


End file.
